Ebenezer applied our airbrakes and the ravenous creature loomed closer, looking like ten tonnes of the very opposite of fun.
“I’ll watch with baited breath, sir”, he shouted.
“I’m sure you will; maybe you’ll even learn something useful for once.”
“Be sure to give him a damned good thrashing”, he called before turning his attention to the controls.
“That’s the spirit, Funkworthy!” I answered with all the bravado I could muster (which, despite the circumstances, was still a whole great big heap of bravado).
Without a moment to lose, I made my way to the back of the craft, towards the small compartment that housed the fuel cells. The outdated lock quickly yielded to the butt of my pistol, and the door swung open to reveal a blissfully obsolete fuel cell. It was small and compact, as suited the size of the vehicle, but no less deadly for it. This style of phlogiston-based fuel cell had been outmoded almost as soon as it had been released due to its incredibly combustible nature and the fact that it was only naturally found on one planet (a distant orb inhabited by tall blue tribal cat people, the complete carpet bombing of which I personally oversaw after an initial ground skirmish).
“Funkworthy, do you remember when I obliterated the asteroid belt of Texilon 12 by cunningly ramming that experimental Sigma class freighter into one of the rocks? Massive explosion. Well, it used the same type of fuel cells as this bucket of bolts.”
“I remember vividly. You made me your defence counsel at the disciplinary hearing, if you recall, and then I drove the getaway car when the hearing found you guilty and you dropped those smoke bombs and legged it”, my companion reminisced.
“Yes. It IS a powerful explosive!” I happily agreed.
I was quite confident this small cell would be enough to penetrate the igneous shell of our pursuer. But getting it in place was the real devil in this plan. I made my way to the very rear of the vehicle.
Ebenezer had slowed the pace of the craft, but the shark was rather uncomfortably close. “It’s getting a little crowded backhere, my good man!” I cried encouragingly.
“Perhaps if you told me your plan, sir?”
That was Ebenezer all over, always demanding to know what the plan was at the most inconvenient of moments; whether in the middle of a high-speed chase, as I steered our tandem hoverbike into a minefield, or as I chose to dangle him on a rope above a pack of feral jackalmen on New Stenhousemuir. There was a time and a place for questions, and that was usually after I had done what I intended to do.
“Just keep the damn thing steady, and when I say—get us away from that gravelly mountain of bastard!” I hollered.
I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind of Ebenezer’s relentless negativity. I fixed my eyes on the looming beast and it looked right back at me, its red eyes full of atavistic hate and the beginnings (or so I thought) of a grudging respect for my bravery.
If this rocky monstrosity was going to swallow my bitter pill, it would need to be good and angry. I thought I knew just how to achieve that. You see, gammonsharks, much like ancient non-flying sharks and tax inspectors, absolutely cannot abide a direct assault on their nose. I smiled at this knowledge and flexed my kicking toes. I measured the distance between us and leant over the ragged edge of the craft as the gammonshark inched a few centimetres closer to the rear of the craft and I realized he was only about a yard away.
I took a breath and let him have it.
It is one thing to physically discourage an irate gammonshark in theory; it’s entirely another to do so with ten tonnes of snapping jaws and ravenous hunger staring fixedly back at you. I braced myself against the skiff's rear bumper and lashed out with my foot, squarely striking the beast’s vulnerable nose. The effect was instant and gratifying. It let out a deafening roar and wheeled around in the air. It recovered a moment later and roared after me again in pure animal fury. It charged, driven into a dumb, gnashing rage by my sheer ballsiness. Perfect, I thought.
In a nanosecond, the land-shark closed the gap afresh, and while my plan was sound (taken as it was straight from the Captain’s handbook, or at least the copy I had with my own annotations and humorous cartoons), even my heroic resolve was beginning to falter. I could feel the heat that escaped from its mouth in the air around us; and simple fear threatened to unman me. In times such as these, where fear, prudence and even that cowardly traitor ‘common sense’ stand in your way, there is only one way to respond: you remind yourself that you are Captain Space Hardcore and act accordingly.
The gammonshark lunged.
I dodged deftly back from its gnashing bites just in time, as the monster’s jaws tore at the rear of the craft, wrenching the steel bumper from us with a sickening metallic squeal. I winced, knowing that the bumper sticker that wittily invited comments on how I was driving was now truly gone. Another bite had punctured the deck itself. As I watched, a thick black smoke poured out of the holes. The gammonshark let out another impressive roar. We sputtered in the air as it charged once more. It was now or never.
Aim true, Hardcore, I thought. Throw straight, and look the devil in in the eye.
I took my chance and hurled the fuel cell towards its cavernous mouth with a titanic overarm heave. I watched the cell whirl in the smoke-filled air with unerring precision. The beast seemed to almost obligingly pluck it from the air. The cell caught in its razor sharp teeth as the beast gnashed down in blind fury.
Bulleye.
The last part of the plan fell into place.
“Step on it!” I bellowed in Funkworthy’s direction. I stumbled as Ebenezer wrung every piece of acceleration out of the dying engines. I steadied myself and looked through the smoke and flames into the mouth of the gammonshark. Unlatching my trusty sidearm, I rested the muzzle on my forearm and sighted the fuel cell, like the Marksman Eagles of the planet Kel’daw.
One shot, one chance.
I compensated for the bucking craft.
I held my breath.
“Smile you son-of-a-”
I pulled the trigger.
It was merely that heightened sense of things that let me see.
The bolt left my gun as if in slow motion. I looked at it in the air. I saw the bloom of orange leave the muzzle as the gun bucked in my hand. I saw the pellet leap out of the fire and into the black air. I saw its path, the slight rise and fall of it, as force and momentum worked on it. I saw it ignore these because of my guiding will. I saw it reach the fuel cell that sat in the beast’s mouth—
.
.
.
The explosion was impressive even by my standards. It threw me backwards in the craft, providing a perfect view of the miniature mushroom cloud of salty dust that blossomed from the point of the explosion. I took in the indescribable sight of a gammonshark cartwheeling majestically through the air and drank in the sweet sound of its howl. A fine victory over shark-kind.
Ebenezer skidded the craft to a halt and was shrilling in my ear, but I had fazed him out. My ears were ringing, and my vision was clouded with dead spots and shimmering lights. I patted myself down briefly to check for damage, but all the important parts seemed to still be attached.
A few seconds passed and I eventually had to acknowledge Ebenezer, who had resorted to slapping me across the face and neck as if I were hysterical.
“I’m fine, I’m fine”, I reassured him in a deafened yell. “Just... calm down, will you?”
“Sorry, sir. You had me worried for a moment is all.”
A brief pause highlighted the stillness of the moment. All that could be heard was my own heart beating in my ears, and the steady creaking of the vehicle's engine slowly cooling.
“Well, that was bracing, eh?” I said, dusting down my slightly battered velvet uniform.
“Indeed, sir.”
I climbed unsteadily to my feet, inspecting the damage around me, then stood stock still as I looked out from the craft’s side. In the dist
ance I could see the body of our recent foe: a pile of ugly rubble, fins and smashed-in teeth. I bade Ebenezer stay where he was and jumped from the side of the skiff. The shifting sand felt strange under my boots as I made my way towards its static form. I had to finish it. My concentration was honed on the still form of the gammonshark, my pistol clutched in a vice-like grip. As I approached, I heard the low moan of laboured breathing.
I walked cautiously up to the head of the creature. It was still alive, dust swirling around its nostrils as its massive frame tried to take in some air. Its mouth was a mess, multiple rows of diamond teeth are no match, it seems, for a phlogiston-based explosive (and, to a lesser extent, my own vigorous kicking). As I drew closer, the enormous predator tried to pull itself into the air, but could not. I looked into its murky eyes, still fixed on me as they had been before.
“That’ll do, shark. You tried your best, but clearly no one told you who you were up against.”
The shark simply stared and continued trying to breathe.
“As far as I’m concerned, we’re done here, shark. You got a problem with that?”
The gammonshark seemed to sigh, and I took it as a sign of acquiescence. I turned from the wounded beast and began walking back to the craft, from which Ebenezer was staring fixedly at us... and waving his arms? I spun on my heel to see the full bulk of the gammonshark flapping to an unsteady post-explosion hover.
My options were even more limited than before, though with an injured mouth it may only have been able to eat me slowly with its powerful gums. Before even the first hare-brained plan could fire from one synapse to another, the gammonshark lunged towards me. It hit me with enough force to send me sprawling onto the ground. It hovered above me, brownish red ichor bubbling from its broken jaws. The gammonshark seemed to grunt as if to say, “No, that’ll do, Captain Hardcore.” Then it turned and sailed away, the bond of respect between warrior and gammonshark forged for the day.
“Of course, that was not to be the last time we met on the field of battle, that shark and I. There was that messy affair on Mendulon 13, but that? That is a story for another time.”
Applause.
* * *
Chapter Two!!
A More Proper Introduction and a Royal Audience
In which Captain Hardcore finishes his tale and meets with the thoroughly entertained court of Aplubia. A Queen gives her thanks but a killer waits in the wings.
I waited for the applause to die down.
Then I waited some more.
After a while, I tired of waiting and silenced my crowd with a brisk and commanding gesture. A man of my worldly-and spacely-experience is not unaccustomed to such a reaction when reciting the tales of my exploits. Courts and banquets the length of the galaxy had each in turn been baffled by my derring-do, delighted by my rapier wit and outraged by my repertoire of dances.
The royal court of Aplubia was no longer an exception on two of those counts. For more than an hour, I had held their rapt attention-weaving stories of adventure, triumph and shark kickings, and of Funkworthy’s sometimes embarrassing lack of faith. After all, it was my duty to enlighten every backward planet I could. Funkworthy had informed me that the Aplubian people had never even developed the technology for their own space travel systems, holodecks or omniscient robotic AIs, choosing instead to languish in their traditions and customs. Well, I had reasoned, that was no reason for them to be deprived of my pulse-pounding stories of heroism and perfectly timed one-liners. If anything, my tales told these orbs what they could aspire to. And if in the course of the evening, they chose to worship me like a god (as so many had before them), then who was I to question their judgement?
Only time would tell. I surveyed the room as it recovered from the effect of my powerful oration and evocative pantomimes. The audience gradually went back to their meals, as stewards moved efficiently from the sides of the room, where they eagerly waited to attend the needs of their guests, and to revive and remove those ladies of the court who had rather over-swooned themselves in the face of my related perils.
I looked around and sighed contentedly to myself. This was my kind of party.
The court was lavishly appointed, and the clothing on display was beyond ostentatious: frills, brocades and small personal chandeliers wept out of the sides of heaving corsets, and I saw towering pointy hats where’er my eye alighted. It was a magnificent arrangement of every imaginable colour-a noisy display of decadence. Contrary to the jarring discordance you might expect, en masse the effect was that of a glorious velvet garden in fullest bloom. Pleasingly, though, the sheer multitude of styles served only to highlight the dashing simplicity of my own garb.
I’d chosen it carefully; it was bold, yet restrained-much like myself. The only modest ornamentation was the heavy gold chain that cinched the regal purple cape about my equally regal shoulders with a platinum brooch that was shaped like my own face but with diamonds for eyes. The cape itself was fashioned from the dyed hide of an Adroxian warblesnake. It had been presented to me on Adroxia for my selfless intervention in the great warblesnake population boom by the grateful elder of the tribe I had encountered. The elder had been an odd fellow, and though I didn’t understand a word he said, we had struck a great rapport. By accepting the cape I may also have ended up married to one of his daughters... but I digress.
Seated at the head table, facing all of the other guests, was Queen Pompfrompulon and her closest family. Behind them sat a row of dour bodyguards and advisors who had remained impressively—and somewhat insultingly—stoic throughout my performance. All things considered, the court was quite impressive—comparable to neither the excessive heights of the luxury I had experienced on Opulon Prime, nor to the primal savagery I had endured on the mud planet Scunthorpe Omega.
As was customary with my more stirring stories, I had finished it from atop a table. I leapt gracefully from it and approached the Queen. She was positively spilling out of a majestic obsidian throne, which groaned under the weight of her hefty regal grandeur. She was clothed in all the finery of her station—crowns and bodices flowing out from every conceivable angle (and at least four inconceivable angles). All in all she looked like a very royal cake. I identified her face and bowed low to it.
“Thank you, your majesty, for the profound honour of allowing me to entertain your esteemed self and the members of your court with my humble tales of shark detonation. I’m sure my paltry interstellar adventures are of meagre interest”, I said, knowing all too well how thrilling every minute of my life was. Modesty is a fine tool that only the smartest and most daring can ever use effectively. She bowed to my expertly delivered deference.
“Not at all, Captain, your reputation does not do you justice”, she said accurately.
“Your majesty is too kind”, I replied as I bowed again. It can be so very difficult to remember the royal protocol of every species in the verse, but one can never go wrong with sincerity and lots of bowing. Unless you’re on the moon of Fellation 6, in which case it’s seen as a rather forward romantic proposition. I must go back there one day.
The Queen continued, while wafting her sceptre around the room, “Please, take your seat, I am sure a great many of my subjects would relish the opportunity to meet a renowned adventurer such as yourself.”
Bowing yet again, I made my way back to my place at the table.
The room was returning to a low hubbub of chatter. I had learned to project my voice, you see, and in my orations or bawdy jokes I could rather overwhelm all other conversation in the room with the focused volume of my words. The key, as I had learned from the Yodel-monks in the Sacred Bellow Valleys of Attraxis, was diaphragm control and relaxing the back throat muscles. That, and pointing your face toward anyone else who was talking at the same time as you, but that was an addition of my own.
Ebenezer, no doubt used to my volume, had recovered from my tale and was spinning a yarn of his own to a small crowd of neighbours. Yet another ov
erlong and tedious account of his military days, no doubt. Sadly, the ability to relate an interesting story did not feature in the list of virtues I would, sometimes too generously, attribute to him as a travelling companion. Many’s the time that I’ve drifted off to sleep to the sound of his rambling as I piloted my craft through a meteor belt, so dull did I find his stories and ‘warnings’. What is perhaps most galling is that the stories in and of themselves would be perfectly fine, featuring me as often as they did, if only a more appropriate orator were to be selected.
I quickly surmised that Funkworthy’s yarn was not worthy of my full attention, lacking as it did any glimmer of drama or wit. Instead, I turned my keen powers of observation on the assorted revellers. Those nearest myself were politely enduring Ebenezer’s endless epic while those more distant were talking amongst themselves, no doubt discussing which of my equally awe-inspiring adventures was their particular favourite.
I made a show of checking the time on the ornate fob watch that lived in my breast pocket. I verified that Ebenezer could see it in the corner of his eye, a subtle warning not to allow his needy desire for compliments to come at the cost of his audience’s entertainment. With that, I moved away to mingle. After all, as the Queen herself had said, there were a great many subjects to dazzle with either my lustrous achievements or a demonstration of the sheer number of push-ups I could do.
As I prowled the room, I noticed that it had settled back into its natural equilibrium. This was fine by me. I am a natural observer of the intricacies of behaviour, a people watcher, and I like to move unseen through crowds, taking in every detail. I approached a small gaggle and slowly, silently infiltrated their group, studying the tiny signals that shot between each of them. It was a set of unconscious tics and signs that would be invisible to most but rendered, to me, each person as an open book-and not even a long book. No, they were colourful books with big letters and cardboard animals that pop up when you turn the page. I examined the person leading the discussion. I looked at the positioning of their hand, the crease of their trouser, the scuff on their shoe... and made my introduction.
The Court of Crusty Killings: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 2